


you've run yourself ragged, so leave your crying at the door

by requiodile



Series: you've paid your undue debts with the coin of your heart [2]
Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Conditioning, Depression, Emotional/Psychological Abuse, Extremely Dubious Consent, Gaslighting, HYDRA Trash Party, M/M, Psychological Horror, Psychological Torture, Sexual Abuse
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-01-25
Updated: 2015-01-25
Packaged: 2018-03-09 00:18:58
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 1
Words: 14,392
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3229082
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/requiodile/pseuds/requiodile
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Pre-TWS, takes place in September of 2013.</p><p>Steve's nothing but a lonely, lonely dog.</p>
            </blockquote>





	you've run yourself ragged, so leave your crying at the door

**Author's Note:**

  * For [eatingcroutons](https://archiveofourown.org/users/eatingcroutons/gifts).



> Read ['birthday boy'](http://archiveofourown.org/works/3222287) first, for this to make any sense. It's short, you'll be ok.
> 
> Although the first 4k or so of this is of Steve and Natasha doing nothing much in particular, the rest divebombs into a whole lotta ugly. Please take note of the tags, particularly the gaslighting and psychological horror. Steve is the very definition of an unreliable narrator.
> 
> Thanks. Enjoy.

Summer goes by in a sticky, apricot-soft glow—twice, Brock suggests another barbecue to celebrate successful missions and the fine, humid weather. “Nothin’ like a cold beer to cool you off after working up a sweat,” he says. Both times, Steve swallows, flushes. He turns his face away in the white fog of the decontamination shower room and curls his toes against the slick tile under his feet as his men pause in their scrubbing and wait for his response; both times, Steve agrees.

Both of those times end with Steve full of good food and a desperate, lonely heat pooling in the bottom of his gut.

Neither of those times Steve mentions to Natasha when she asks how he’d been.

He hasn’t seen her for several months when she swings by his apartment unexpectedly, jingling the keys to her nondescript, civilian hatchback in one hand. The “non-urgent” recon that she’d been posted to had ended up being more involved than anyone had suspected, and she’d been gone for far longer than what had been initially projected.

While she was away, Steve had found that he’d missed her poking her nose into his business. He tells her this over their late lunch, at a ludicrously fancy, glass-ceilinged tea room that she’d dragged him to. Steve feels a little out of place with the delicate chandeliers and the teacups, but the atmosphere is golden and sweet in a strange way that reminds him of _home_ , in the scratch of the phonograph from the corner of the room, in the typeface of the menu, in the familiar curves of the establishment’s aesthetic. At the same time, it’s rather silly and steeped in the heady aromas of lilac and cream, but Steve still likes it. He likes that Natasha had thought to bring him here. There’s a crystal bowl in the center of their small round table, bearing a dusty pink cabbage rose head floating in the shallow water.

Natasha’s sunglasses are hooked in the front of her sundress; when she leans forward, they pull down the upper hem with their weight to expose a bit of her pale cleavage. The dress itself is a light yellow, billowing about her calves. It’s slightly sheer, but somehow reveals absolutely nothing beyond what’s already uncovered by fabric. It suits her.

“Really?” She plucks a neat, triangular cucumber sandwich from the tiered tray and nibbles off each corner—the resulting circle is then added to the growing pyramid on her plate. “Aw, Steve. I missed you too.”

“Did you?” There are about eight different tiered trays that Natasha had ordered for him, overflowing onto the next table over. Steve reaches across to take a swirled savory pastry and puts it directly into his mouth. It’s something with pesto, and melts upon his tongue.

“No details, but the wind chill was something I could have done without. I missed my portable space heater. You can’t get the kind that rubs your feet and also knows how to shoot a gun from just any kind of store, you know. Limited edition, discontinued, one-of-a-kind, you name it. The absolute toastiest, but I wasn’t able to bring him along, alas.”

“I’m not that portable.”

Natasha dips her fingers into the rosewater bowl to clean them, but takes a few loose petals with her to the linen napkin on her lap. She cradles them in one palm, prods and strokes them with a pinky finger. They don’t bruise.

“At least I managed to get you out of your place and into the outside air, you homebody. Good job, me.” When she extends her arm over to Steve, he mirrors her gesture in response—the petals end up fluttering down into his own hand, one by one. “Steve?”

He looks up. The petals are so light that he hardly feels them land. “How are you? For real? You look better, but that doesn’t mean anything if you don’t actually _feel_ better.”

Before brunch, Natasha had led him all around town; she had taken him to the art galleries in downtown, a couple of hole-in-the-wall places that Steve hadn’t discovered for himself in addition to the larger ones that he had simply failed to visit on his own. He’d seen some in Manhattan, but by the time he’d moved to D.C., well.

Natasha had also gone shopping, and had sat him down and made him apply his haphazard knowledge of color theory to her complexion. He’d mostly stuck to pencil and charcoal after Project Rebirth despite having his colorblindness corrected by the serum, so his attempts at assisting her might have fallen a bit flat.

She hadn’t seemed to mind, preferring his company over his helpless indecision between seafoam and peach. Steve had, though, made himself somewhat useful when Natasha had been looking for clothing which suited her body type—his artistic study and appreciation of a fine silhouette, at least, was a familiar thing to draw upon.

Natasha had been pleased enough with Steve’s choices of fabric and cut that she’d praised him for his taste, and he’d blushed; this had caused the store assistant to complement them as a charming couple, which had made Steve go pale in bewilderment. A couple? He and Nat? The plain idea of it was so absurd that it had left his brow creased as they were walking out of the store; Natasha had attempted to make up for his discomfort by indulging him with a visit to a high-end arts and crafts place. He hadn’t been in this one before. With the exception of that brief, disorienting time in New York shortly after he’d been unfrozen, Steve hadn’t looked to purchase paper or pencil since. It wasn’t as if he touched his sketchbooks often enough to merit a supply run. They were, after all, mostly empty.

“Pick up something for yourself with that massive back pay of yours,” she’d said, but Steve had stared at the sketchbooks with their prices that he still hadn’t entirely adjusted to, had looked over at the myriad of fountain pens and thirty different models of pencil sharpeners—he had stood there, with his empty basket, and stood there, and stood there, and did his best to wander about whenever Natasha’s attention returned to him so as to not look as if he was lost, or something.

Ultimately, Natasha had gently exchanged the beginner’s watercolor pad Steve had randomly grabbed with a vellum sketchbook, one wrapped in real, buttery leather binding with a silk ribbon for a closure. This had been at the cash register.

She’d smiled at the cashier, with this funny lopsided thing that was neither her fanged, predatory façade nor the faint crinkle that was the genuine deal. Steve wasn’t sure how to interpret it, but watched as she slid across a slender, burnished gunmetal pencil case and added, “This too.”

The label, Steve had read, stated that the contents included pencils of eight different hardnesses in both graphite and sepia for a total of sixteen. Steve had checked the basket again; it hadn’t occurred to him to toss in watercolors with the only item he had originally selected for himself, but it had been less of a selection and more of indifferent settlement.

He recalls that Natasha had requested gift wrapping and a plain, off-white paper bag, and carried Steve’s purchase out of the store. She then handed it to him once they were a block down the street. “Surprise. Here you go.”

Steve took it; the luxurious weight felt odd in his hands. He had become accustomed to empty palms when walking down the street, but had found the frail texture of the paper handles gentle from Natasha’s skin—it was this, along with the care with which she’d passed over the bag, that made the gift easier to bear.

They’d stuck their heads in-and-out of various stores along the avenue for another hour, and then made their way to lunch.

Steve looks at the accumulation of bags set under the adjacent table. Natasha had made a point of carrying only her purse, but Steve didn’t mind being her luggage boy. It wasn’t as if the sum of her purchases was heavy to him, nor financially unmanageable given the amount in his bank account. He doesn’t like going online to check his balance, honestly, but even though he cuts into at least a third of it each month to dispense to charity, his stipend, back pay, and SHIELD bonuses refill it faster than he can keep track of without being forced to stare at that disheartening number on his laptop screen.

He’s glad to be rid of some of it, at least. The sales associates at Louis Vuitton and Yves Saint-Laurent had mostly ignored him in his leather jacket and jeans until they saw him pull out his black card to pay. Natasha had insisted on the black card for some reason and Steve has to admit—it certainly prompts a reaction. Stark had signed him up for one, and Steve only ever uses it whenever he clicks on the donate button for the Veterans’ Relief Fund and the ilk. For those, it’s sort of nice not having a credit limit.

But. About Natasha’s question. Steve looks back at her, and she’s not looking at him; she’s focused more on wiping the lipstick off of the rim of her water glass. There’s a lemon slice floating in the water, which she fishes out with a fork to suck upon. He figures that the foundation on her fingers which obscures her gun calluses and crisscrossing scars would muddle the taste of the sharp citrus, but Steve knows that her attention upon him has hardly wavered despite her apparent distraction.

He doesn’t know how much of her is an act, how much of the woman before him exists only as an assumed personality that Natasha wears in the same way as the rest of her makeup. Is Natasha even her real name?

Steve doesn’t know. She’s reliable on missions, cool and cutting. Her aim is impeccable, and Fury trusts her. They work well together, and she seems to enjoy his presence. For now, that will have to be enough.

“I’m fine,” he answers, and lets his gaze drop back down to his outstretched hand resting on the tabletop. He doesn’t want to let go of the petals just yet, so pulls his hand into his lap and pets them, carefully. He’s long since mastered the fine motor control to regulate the amount of strength he expends doing day-to-day activities. Under his touch, the petals remain as soft as ever, damp with water but not with moisture from crushed capillaries. “I get enough sleep.”

“Getting in your grandpa hours? Whatever regimen you keep does wonders for those wrinkles.”

Steve shrugs. “I had a real long soak. Salt water, it’s amazing stuff.”

“I’m guessing that you’re sick of baths,” Natasha laughs, but her voice takes a turn for considerate—her words depart her lips as delicately as the disassembled fractions of rose that she’d given him moments prior. “I got you that electric blanket for Christmas. You never got back to me about how it was working for you.”

Steve had practically lived in the thing until he’d ruined it during his night terrors, months ago. He hadn’t gotten around to buying a new one. “Yeah, it’s been great.” He waves his free hand at the early September sunshine filtering through the ceiling and the windows. “I haven’t had a need for it right now, but I’ve been using it.”

“Besides this, you’ve been doing things outside of work, right?”

“Reading,” Steve says, immediately. It’s the easiest, truest answer that also neatly avoids the difficulties of explaining everything else, or utter lack thereof. “Catching up. I’m still pretty far behind, but it’s not like I have a deadline, do I.”

The modern doctors had projected Steve’s biological lifespan to be over a hundred years, easily. Although his enhanced metabolism had also provided the alternative interpretation of a drastically shortened time on earth, the serum had done something to buffer him against the aging effects of oxygen upon his cells, while simultaneously accelerating his capabilities to regenerate and repair himself in the case of damage.

 _In all likelihood_ , they’d said _, you might live to see the next century and a half, probably more. If you take care of yourself, we’d like to think that you could even see 2250._

Steve’s never exactly stopped being a medical experiment—none of his medical records are subject to the kind of patient confidentiality that’s afforded to most civilians, but at least it takes a certain level of clearance to access his files, and another kind of clearance entirely to attend to his short-lived bumps and bruises.

That’s not including what the Smithsonian wants to display next spring, but from what Steve’s watched and read for research, most of that information is already public knowledge. He’d been more concerned about their portrayal and inclusion of Gabe and Jim. Although the historians and the museum staff had fought alongside him wholeheartedly, it had been an a trial of its own to convince the sponsors of the exhibition to support the honest representation of two colored men—one of whom was an American-born Japanese man—as the friends and equals of Captain America. Besides that, Steve had taken a step back and let the museum do as it pleases. So long as they don’t _lie_ to the public about the men who’d willingly followed him into the fire, Steve couldn’t care less what they say about him.

“No,” Natasha replies. “There’s no rush.” She finishes her lemon slice, finishes her water. Steve watches her nibble on three more sandwich triangles before she adds the egg salad, tuna, and caprese circles to her precariously-full plate. She meets Steve’s eyes, briefly—she pauses in her selection of her next geometric victim to refill her glass from the pitcher, but as she’s pouring water into Steve’s glass, she offhandedly remarks, “I like to take my stupid indulgences where I can.”

Her hair’s tightly curled today, springy under her headscarf. A lock pulls free and bobs by her left temple in a dark red, nearly auburn spiral. Natasha tugs it straight to examine it, and leisurely tucks it back under. “It wasn’t as if I had the kind of luxury to be the kind of girl who was a _girl_ , when I was young and naïve enough to think I’d ever be one; I’m not sure if I ever was. A rich girl, a silly girl, a wasteful, petty little girl with a flimsy dress and a sweet, handsome boytoy on her arm and not a worry in the whole world—” she chuckles, resting her elbow upon the table and her chin in her palm. “So here I am now, being a _girl_. Tell me how pretty I am, my fling-of-the-hour.”

Who is she, again? She’s the Black Widow, the assassin, the super-spy, the liar—but yet, Natasha Romanoff, as untrustworthy as she is, happens to be a friend. He’d trust her with a knife, but not his life. He trusts her to trust his word, so when Steve speaks, he does so in full sincerity. He puts the rose petals back upon the tablecloth, arranged in a sparse bloom all on their own.

“You’re beautiful—the most beautiful gal in the whole city.” _Except for Peggy_ , he thinks, but even with this Natasha catches him, and smirks.

“I can see your pants smoking from here, and it’s not because of your shapely tush.”

“Don’t ogle my ass without my consent.”

He gets a laugh, throaty and voluptuous like the breast of some dun-feathered, diving raptor. “You’ve been hanging around the internet forums with too many teenagers, Steve.” Natasha reaches around to swap their plates. “My fling-of-the-hour is obligated to finish my messes.”

It’s a mess that Steve doesn’t mind. His plate had been mostly empty to begin with, but now that there’s food placed in front of him and a standing order, he eats it all with ease. There are twenty-two circle-sandwiches, and by the time he’s finished with them, Steve’s appetite finally kicks in and he moves onto the other tiered trays with little prompting.

There are small sausages in rolls, miniature chocolate-filled croissants, pastries stuffed with cream and rolled in slivered almonds. Steve eats cubes of coffee cake rolled in buttercream frosting, slices of pear tart and tiny domes of butter posing as cookies. He eats everything, because Natasha makes it her mission to use his stomach as a take-out container by transferring over the entire contents of each tray as soon as his plate empties again.

He eats everything, and ends up indiscriminately taking alternating bites of savory and sweet. He doesn’t think about whether or not the flavors go well together—when he’d been small, he’d been phlegmy and congested so frequently that it wasn’t as if he could taste well in the first place. Hell, he couldn’t breathe well enough to _smell_ most of the time. It sure made the garbage chute on the other side of his kitchen window more bearable. He hadn’t had enough to afford salt or pepper or sugar, not often.

Steve tastes salt and pepper and sugar; it’s all fine.

After, they meander back to Natasha’s car to offload the bags, and then go for another walk, this time along the edge of East Potomac Park—it’s warm enough that food truck vendors and ice cream carts are still active.

Natasha gets a waffle cone. Steve doesn’t.

With her arm looped through his and her sunhat on his head, nobody recognizes them. They keep to the edge of the path as the early afternoon runners and bicyclists go by, and by, and by. The sun’s out, but so is the beginning of the autumn chill—after a few minutes, Steve removes his jacket and drapes it over Natasha’s bare shoulders; she purrs in appreciation. “I told you I missed my space heater.”

“My jacket takes up a lot less space than me.”

“It doesn’t snore, either.”

Snore? “I don’t snore,” Steve argues. He had _used_ to snore, because his airways had a tendency towards untimely constriction and he’d have to lie flat on his back with his head tilted back on the pillow to keep his throat straight as he slept.

Natasha’s eyes are smiling over the top edge of her sunglasses. Her mouth is occupied with her salted caramel fudge, so to fill up the silence, Steve blurts, “Is this—is this a date?”

She chokes. Steve hurriedly passes over a handful of the paper napkins he’d taken from the cart, and holds the cone while Natasha dabs at the syrup on her nose and lips. They shift over into the shade of a half-bare tree so as to avoid obstructing the path; a bit of the ice cream slips off of the thin waffle to melt in a rivulet down the back of Steve’s hand. He ignores it.

“Nat?"

“Your timing is _awful_ —look.”

Steve looks. He spies a freckle on her nose, where the foundation had been wiped off. “See?” Natasha accuses. “I’m not the most beautiful gal in all of D. C. anymore.”

“And you’re saying that’s _my_ fault?”

She shrugs, and fishes in her purse to reapply her lipstick without the use of a mirror. It goes on perfectly. “No. But it could explain why you don’t go on dates more often.”

Steve frowns. “Isn’t this a date?”

“Do you want it to be? Because, no.”

“Oh. Well, I. I didn’t really—I, no. I didn’t.”

Natasha takes her cone back, and wipes up the melted sugar and cream on Steve’s hand with great delicacy before she tosses the used napkin in the nearby garbage. “That’s good,” she murmurs. “It’s not the kind of thing that’s possible for me. But what about Callie? You know, from H and R.”

“Callie?”

“Yeah, sweet girl, about 6’3”? She sews pillowcases for the elderly.”

“Is she the one who smells like honey and sweet potatoes?”

“That’s the one!”

Steve shakes his head. “No, too sweet for me. A little cloying.”

They start walking again, and Natasha threads her sticky fingers between his. Her palm is cool. “Ok, Undine. She does the thing with the rockets, has cute zigzag nail art.”

“Too much dog hair.”

“Penelope, from the twenty-fifth floor, pushes around the muffin cart? She makes that lemon poppy seed from scratch.”

“I thought poppy seed was banned from the cart due to complications with the spontaneous drug testing.”

“Well, if you specifically _ask_ she’s got them. The brownies are extra.”

“Good to know.”

“So, Penelope? I have her number.”

“Her stuff’s a little dry, sorry.”

“Oh, so you _did_ know about her black mar-cart bakery. Damn, I could have had you pick up stuff for me, why didn’t you _say anything_.”

They banter in this way for two loops through the park. The time passes quickly, even with the blip in the middle when Natasha had said she’d had someone rather different to suggest. When Steve didn’t respond, when he’d only shook his head, she hadn’t provided a male name again.

It’s startling when her phone buzzes in her purse, alerting them both to another mission that she’s got ready. There’s an abject pang of something in Steve’s chest when Natasha pulls away from him to check her message. He’d forgotten what it was like to spend a day with someone who kept pace with him, a plain, sunlit day in which there was no gunfire or gurgling cries or that scratching _ting_ that came from somebody opening up a cold can of spam. He’d forgotten, and the fact that he had at all twists in him, wretched and shameful.

“I have to go,” she says. “Let’s head back to the car, I’ll drop you off at your place. Dupont Circle, right?”

Steve manages a wobbly smile for her; Natasha’s open, delighted surprise is worth the effort. “Didn’t you know my address in the first place, when you picked me up?”

“Just checking to see if you’ve still got all your marbles, Mister Rogers.”

“Don’t get ahead of yourself, miss.”

Natasha turns up the radio on the way back—she sings along to nearly all of the hits from the late ‘90s and early ‘00s, saccharine and strangely thick in a way that Steve suspects might be the remnant of an accent that no longer exhibits itself in her everyday speech. Her voice fills the car, but it’s the kind that whispers in and out like an autumnal, frosted fog.

It doesn’t last, so Steve doesn’t wave when she leaves him at the curb with his white paper bag dangling from the fingers of one hand. She doesn’t wave, either.

After a full day of being not-alone, it’s odd, almost, to return to the apartment. It shouldn’t be by now, but it is.

So, Steve sets aside his bag full of the knickknacks he’d acquired throughout the day upon the side table by the door, toes off his shoes, and then picks up the bag again to set it gently upon his kitchen counter.

He then resumes with his nightly routine, which begins with a full run-down of his place. He turns on all of his lights, checks every nook and cranny, opens every cabinet and drawer. Then, one-by-one, he closes them all, shuts off all of the lights.

Living room. Kitchen. Hallway. Once in his bedroom, Steve checks his phone; no messages. He sends out a request to Fury for another mission before he strips off his clothes.

Right sock off first, tonight. It’s different from Steve’s usual, because Brock had noticed how Steve had strapped on his gear in precisely the same way every time. When Brock had asked why, in that shoulder-bumping, casual time during the post-mission weapon-cleaning lull, Steve had answered that he’d gotten used to doing it that way, so it was the fastest for him. Steve had been subsequently challenged to mix things up, so. Right sock. Not left.

Jeans. Then jacket, underwear, shirt and undershirt. It’s all very odd. Steve doesn’t know how this is supposed to achieve anything, but he puts his clothes in their appropriate places and pads over to the shower in the bathroom across the hall.

 _Mix it up,_ Brock whispers, so right foot in first, then left. Steve makes the mistake of turning on the water before testing the temperature like he usually does; he bites off the end of his tongue in the unexpected shock of the cold, so he sticks one hand in his mouth to hold it in place while it reattaches, and uses the other to hastily adjust the knob to the highest setting towards the red. In his panicked dismay, he doesn’t turn the knob back towards neutral fast enough, and scorches himself with the hot water before he manages out a suitable temperature. He trembles, desperately uncomfortable and frustrated with his own inadequacy.

Steve’s back is growing cold, so he turns around and allows the water to pound into his back, to sweep over his shoulders and down his chest in a rapidly cooling mantle. Steam fills the room, and Steve eventually turns back around to rest his forehead on the shower wall. That way, the water strokes down the back of his neck; it’s winding and coiling and never choking. It doesn’t run down to drip around his face like it used to, when his hair was long enough to comb off to the side. He’d been scalped on an early SHIELD mission, when his hair had gotten caught in his helmet, which had then been caught on a hook. Once his skin had grown back, Steve hadn’t bothered to let his hair grow out again. Long, it had proven itself to be a hindrance—long, it had been dated.

It’s faster to wash now, but it’s not as if it had taken a significant amount of time before. Short is good. Short is fast, is new. Short is modern, and Steve needs to fit in.

Speed is no excuse for sloppiness, though. His mother had always set him under a strict regimen of personal care—as a nurse, she knew all too well that filth only led to sickness, and Steve was plenty ill already. Steve _likes_ being clean, but somewhere in-between then and now, water had become a strange foe; it offered to him both the comfort of heat and company of pressure, but with those blessings came the misery of immersion, of the wet and cold that followed if Steve wasn’t quick enough to dry himself off.

Under the spray, Steve feels less alone than he actually is. Maybe it’s the fact that he’s spent seventy years with salt on his skin, but he knows water too well to feel fear, not anymore.

It helps that the longer he stands there, stands still in the constant rhythm, the less and less the water feels like water. He feels dry, almost—embraced in warmth, wrapped up in arms that aren’t his. Moving arms, living arms.

It’s easy to drift, so Steve does. He doesn’t have anywhere else to be.

He goes back a month and a half, to late July. Eidetic memory, besides the nightmares, has some perks; Steve can dream as he breathes, as less of a recollected fantasy and more of a bygone reality brought to the immediate, relived surface.

Since July fourth, Steve and his team had had two more barbecues at Steve’s place—the first wasn’t as structured of an affair as Steve’s birthday party, and had been something looser, closer.

The food, as always, arrives first into Steve’s mind. There are chicken wings with honey mustard and some kielbasa on the grill and maybe Steve eats sauerkraut for the first time since 1945. It’s too hot to be cozy, but it ends up being cozy near the end of the night when Jack pushes Steve down onto the couch and forces him to throw up a leg onto Hugh’s lap.

“Shit, Cap,” Hugh laughs; he runs a dry palm all the way up from Steve’s ankle to his inner thigh, rucking up Steve’s shorts nearly to the groin before Steve has the composure to protest. “That’s one hell of a bruise.”

Steve remembers that they’d just finished off a mission before then, one that had involved him being thrown off of an armored vehicle and being run over by two more before David and Brock had been able to disable one from the inside and shoot out the driver of the other. Steve had managed to walk away with a minor fracture most everywhere and a great deal of bruising.

Walking might have been an understatement, actually; near the end of the mission, Steve had been caught under some falling debris that had sent some rebar straight through his femoral artery. Given the mission parameters, he’d been forced to remove the impaled object in order to struggle free and apprehend the fleeing target, but that had meant that Steve had been running with the fingers of one hand palm-deep in his own thigh to keep the artery pinched shut. It had closed up just fine, but the hard impact of the chase had left severe, blue-black mottling all through his recovering muscle. Two days later, and his flesh was still pushing out the debris left behind.

“Check that _out_ ,” Hugh continues, rapt with fascination. He pulls Steve’s knee closer in order to push Steve’s shorts up a little further, exposing more of that raw, discolored skin. “What a color.”

At that point, the others begin to move forward; it isn’t long before there’s a hand pressing into Steve’s sore abdomen, and another wrapping about his other ankle. One set of fingers traces the splotches on Steve’s torso revealed by his tank top, clinically curious. They push into and under the bruises, and Steve shudders. He doesn’t recall which hands belong to whom.

Initially, he attempts to squirm away onto his own seat—but then, Brock settles to his side and situates himself in such a way that Steve has no choice but to more-or-less lean back into Brock’s chest as Hugh keeps moving Steve’s knee this way and that.

An arm loops itself about Steve’s waist, and Brock’s thumb runs along the edge of Steve’s waistband to dig into his purpled hipbone. Steve whimpers, involuntarily. “We gotta take better care of you,” Brock says, all wet and hot at the nape of Steve’s neck. “It makes us look bad when our commanding officer looks like a burst berry-surprise pie.”

Somebody gives a squeeze to Steve’s left pectoral. “I like berry-surprise,” echoes a voice, but it grows indistinct in the immediate, soothing disorientation of hands petting up and down his clammy, hurting skin.

It, indeed, hurts. An accelerated healing factor can only do so much under such a limited timeframe, but despite this—

Despite this, Steve allows himself to slacken, to let his team touch their fill. It hurts less when he’s warm; when he’s warm, hurts cease to matter. His team is here—under their hands, Steve’s safe. There’s no cold, and none of that sick emptiness that fills his days when he’s not on missions, when he’s not with them.

After a while, somebody says, “He’s lookin’ awful pink,” and Steve drops his head down onto Brock’s shoulder. The scent of him is clean, familiar, tainted with the reassuring tang of perspiration. He drifts towards that, and his periphery flickers and fades. “I don’t know if this is sweat from the weather or if he’s literally still raw from all that fucking roadburn.”

“Probably the latter,” somebody else replies.

Yeah, Steve’s feeling sticky from the humidity, but his new-grown flesh leaves pills of red beneath Brock’s fingernails when Brock scratches lightly along Steve’s abdomen. “You’re so _raw_ ,” Brock whispers. “We _really_ need to take better care of you.”

He punctuates the statement with a nuzzle behind Steve’s flushed ear, and presses his teeth into the soft skin at the corner of Steve’s jaw—at the same time, Brock also slaps his palm down on Steve’s stomach and digs in his fingers. Steve chokes out a wailing, abortive cry that’s quickly stifled by the lips latching onto the side of his neck to suck and soothe him into silence. “Shhh, shhh,” he hears, so Steve goes quiet, whimper by whimper.

He’s breathing hard, and when he looks down at himself, he’s mortified to see his erection on display, distorting the front of his shorts; when Steve tries to turn his hips to hide himself, he finds that he can’t. There’s two men at each of his legs to keep them open and sprawling, and although it wouldn’t be hard to fight free, Steve doesn’t.

He doesn’t, and Patrick slides a hand up through the rumpled fabric of one leg of Steve’s shorts to palm at Steve’s damp briefs. “Shhh, hey now,” the voices say, “C’mon, Cap, let us in.”

It’s too—it’s too much, and something akin to terror surges in his body under the sting of Brock’s hand. Steve pulls away, hiding his face into the crook of Brock’s neck in desperately conflicted shame. He doesn’t know what to think, so he curls his knees up in defense while protesting the withdrawal of the hands from his skin in little, unhappy mewls. He doesn’t know what to say, or what to do, but he doesn’t want them to leave; he’s not ready, but just—just don’t leave. Don’t leave him alone.

 _“Please,_ ” Steve begs aloud, unaware that he does so.

Chuckles, some muted laughter; but they press in again, and stroke him, pet him, take care of him—they touch his face, his chest, his hips and thighs and calves. Their calluses catch on the fine hairs dusted over Steve’s body, carve minute tears into his paper-thin patches of new skin, caress the dappled and damaged parts of him.

It hurts, and Steve arches into the strange relief of their presence. Brock’s hand climbs up underneath Steve’s tank to clasp a palm over the left pectoral and roll the nipple between his rough fingers. Steve cries, softly. It hurts. It burns, burns low and deep and hot, so hot.

Brock’s other hand comes around to wrap over Steve’s throat, slowly nudging the curve of Steve’s neck up and back to thrust out his chest. “Atta boy, _good boy_ , we got you.”

Good? Steve tries to regulate his breathing. He’s getting dizzy, but he’s been drifting for a while, anyway. He’s close enough to the surface that he still flinches whenever an unknown hand brushes against his clothed cock, but the hand always pulls away and Steve soon slackens again. He drifts, like an unfinished plank set upon an unmoving tide. There’s nothing in sight, nothing but sky above and sea below—nothing.

He doesn’t know when he nods off, but he awakens with his cheek resting on the sharp jut of Brock’s collarbone. He’s naked; he doesn’t know when that happened, but he doesn’t care. He’s safe. He’s warm. He’s woken up, and he’s not alone.

Steve remembers that the room had been empty save for him and Brock—he remembers that he’d lifted his head to blink at whoever had been moving around in the kitchen. He remembers that it had been Jack Rollins, emerging with a glass of water in one hand. The glass had been so cold that the condensation on the outside surface had rolled down in shining beads to drip onto Steve’s floor with each step Jack had taken closer to the living room.

Jack comes up to the back of the couch, glass still in hand. Steve shivers at its closeness. “Hey, buddy,” Jack says, ruffling Steve’s hair. The fingers twist at his nape, tighten and tug him closer. Steve’s breathing grows labored; he’s lax and still simmering from sleep, and he feels—

Jack scratches at an itch with his fingers, hard and satisfying. Steve groans, weakly. “Hey, _boy,_ you had a good nap? You thirsty?” The cold water glass gets pressed up against Steve’s sleep-warm neck without an answer, eliciting a full-body shudder and another groan. “That’s it, yeah. Feel good?”

Steve doesn’t know what he feels, but then Brock shifts beneath him and Steve feels a gummy stickiness between them that he can’t place at first.

Brock’s voice is hoarse. “Fuck, look at you,” he growls, and reaches down from Steve’s back to grip Steve’s bare hip in one hand and the front of Steve’s neck in the other. Together, Brock’s and Jack’s hands encircle Steve’s neck entirely. Steve opens his mouth, and Jack tips the water onto his tongue—the ice cubes click against Steve’s teeth, and the excess water tumbles out of the corners of Steve’s lips to trickle in concentrated agony down his body. Moaning, Steve makes to pull away, but then he realizes why his belly is tacky.

Brock jerks his hips, once, twice—Steve chokes on the water and coughs as the fullness in his body becomes apparent and his own cock springs back to helpless hardness. His two men hold him in place; Steve’s splutters and wheezes soon become cries, and his voice quickly grows sweet at the heat crawling up from his center.

“Such a good boy, so good, so _good—_ “ The praise makes Steve spread his sore legs wider, makes his blush spread further up his sides to tease high upon his cheeks. His hands clench in the fabric of Brock’s shirt; save for where the cloth is rucked up to expose the semen-splattered stomach, Brock is entirely dressed, still. Steve can feel the zipper of Brock’s jeans scraping at the tender skin of his groin.

There, Steve feels raw. How long had…? When? He hadn’t been injured there, but his sphincter is loose and wet and clenches, fluttering, in time to the throb of Brock’s pulse. It doesn’t matter, he supposes. It feels good.

He grinds down, rocks himself back and forth as best as he can to chase the sparks of pleasure filtering in through the haze of his drifting, dreamy perception. Brock takes his hand off of Steve’s hip to wrap his fingers around Steve’s bobbing erection. “ _Good boy_ ,” he says, when Steve comes after just a few light strokes. He says it again when Steve ejaculates again—and again, and then one more after that. The last is accompanied by a sob, or several; Steve’s refraction period is impossibly short, but it doesn’t mean that forcing one through after he’s expended isn’t painful. The pain doesn’t last long, since Brock opens up the palm about Steve’s throat so Steve can nuzzle into the petting touch.

“So good, Cap. So good.” The thrusts slow in their pace, but Brock keeps stroking Steve’s cock; he nudges Jack’s hand off of Steve’s nape with a finger. Steve whimpers, confused. The pressure on the back of his neck had been extremely pleasant, but before he can muster his voice to ask for it to return, Brock throws the both of them off of the couch and onto the floor.

Steve slams down onto his back and Brock, still inside of him, seizes a blue-black hip again and renews his rutting with great, vicious earnestness; the force of it drives Steve’s shoulders into the rug and rubs off his newest layer of skin. It hurts, but as always, the hurt fades in the face of how badly Steve wants everything else.

Steve remembers grunting at the impact, gasping and struggling—but the angle had made for an extremely gratifying rhythm against his prostate, and after he had come again, Steve’s thighs fell apart all slack and soft confronted with this pleasure. He remembers being overcome, being helpless; but there was no danger in submitting to the care of his men. He was safe—there was no danger.

“Fucking _gorgeous_ , Cap,” Brock croons, releasing Steve to pet his hands up and down Steve’s torso, running thin scratches along Steve’s ribs and palpating Steve’s pectorals. “Open up, yeah, c’mon, so fucking easy and pretty—good boy, _good boy_.”

He grabs a palmful of breast tissue in each hand, digs his thumbnails into Steve’s areoles. It hurts. Steve arches off of the floor and tastes the iron in the air from his ruined rug. “You have any idea how fucking incredible these are, pal? Fuck, _fuck_.”

It’s as if the whole of him is stuttering; Steve reaches up with anxious desperation to loop his arms around Brock’s neck for some leverage, any leverage. To his relief, Brock leans down and embraces Steve in turn. “So sweet for me, Jesus _Christ—_ but you know what?”

It takes a while for Steve to respond. He’s burning all over, he’s on fire, he’s peeling away and still adrift in the smoke. His thighs ache, and he’s long since been thirsting for enough air. “W-what?” It comes out embarrassingly thin and breathy.

“I’m a good guy. I _share_.”

Brock sits back and hoists Steve upward into a sitting position upon his lap with a thick groan—Steve writhes at the change in position, whimpering as his weight drives Brock deeper into his body. He clings to Brock as best as he can and rubs his face into the crook of Brock’s neck to ground himself. Brock smells like sweat and blood and semen; Steve recognizes all three as his own.

“Rollins, you ready?”

“That’s a fucking stupid question,” Jack answers, uneven in his eagerness. The front of Jack’s shirt presses against the exposed redness of Steve’s upper back, and stings, terribly; however, the additional heat and pressure of Jack’s body plastered against Steve’s body is very welcome, and Steve loosens his grip on Brock to tilt his head back in acquiescence.

Steve hears Jack’s knees drop to the floor in a soft thud that belies the thought that Jack would strip down, too. But no, only Steve remains entirely unclothed. The only skin that grinds against his own is that of Jack’s slick erection at the top of Steve’s cleft. “Aw, fuck,” Jack hisses, sliding his cock in-between Steve’s asscheeks. The spongy head bumps against the small of Steve’s back. “You think I should get more?”

More what? Brock reaches off to the side and picks up something. It’s a pump bottle of lubricant. Steve recognizes it as the one from his bedroom, the one he keeps in the bottom of his nightstand. When did it get to his living room? The only time Brock had seen it was when he had stayed behind after Steve’s birthday party, and none of the team had gone in and out of his bedroom when they had been here, earlier—

However, his thoughts are interrupted by the wet, startling push of two of Brock’s fingers into him, into the quivering passage alongside Brock’s cock. “Eh, he’s soft enough. There’s plenty in here.” The fingers withdraw, and Steve squirms at the newness of the moisture where their bodies connect.

Plenty? Steve’s confused, and he must make some kind of sound, since Brock turns his face so that they’re eye-to-eye. “You gonna be a good boy?” Steve’s hair and face get petted, and Steve fades with the reassurance. “You gonna be nice and soft enough for Jack, here? You gonna show him how sweet you are?”

Steve’s been good, right? He doesn’t entirely know what’s going on, but he nods anyway, fuzzy. Brock slowly reaches behind himself to unwind Steve’s arms from around his neck, and reorients them wrist-to-elbow behind Steve’s back; Steve doesn’t mind, because Brock’s tilted his head down to leave sucking bites all along the spread of his chest. Lightheaded, Steve glances down to see that the indents of teeth actually linger upon his battered skin instead of fading. He’s bruised enough all over that new marks aren’t receiving the brunt of his healing capabilities.

“Mmm, that’s right. You’re a _good boy_ , Cap, and it’s not fair if I get all the attention—Hey, Jack, pass over your goddamned belt already.”

The leather is cheap. The edges are sharp, and they cut into the tender skin of Steve’s forearms as Jack and Brock bind his arms together. It wouldn’t be hard at all to flex and loosen the bindings, but then Brock strokes down his side and praises him for doing so well, for holding so still. “Baby, you’re going to stay like this for a little while, yeah?”

Steve’s thirsty again, and he struggles to work his throat into order. “Why?” he croaks, shivering. Brock’s got a palm on Steve’s solar plexus to keep him upright, and Jack’s gripping Steve’s forearms where they’re bound. Despite the stagnant heat of the…evening? Night? Morning? Steve doesn’t know, but he’s growing cold.

It’s oppressively humid in the room, but all Steve wants is to curl into some warm skin. He’s cold.

“Why?” Jack sounds genuinely surprised. His hands drop from Steve’s arms down to Steve’s buttocks, spreading them. Steve wants to lean forward and hide, but Brock tuts and keeps pushing him back.

Dry fingers brush over where Steve’s spread and swollen around Brock’s cock—Steve flinches at the touch and contracts, reflexively. Brock hisses, Jack chuckles. “Well, buddy,” he begins, after taking a generous pump of lube from the bottle, “We don’t want you do have to do anything.”

“H-huh?” Steve can’t focus properly, not with slippery fingers babying the join of his thighs and his stretched rim.

“We’re taking _care_ of you, Cap,” Brock grits, biting into the right side of Steve’s chest right over the nipple—Steve’s sharp inhale ends up being more of a moan. “You’ve been a real good boy—so just, just relax, would you? Just let us take care of you, so don’t you fret now.”

Brock pushes his arms between them and hooks his elbows beneath Steve’s sprawled knees; he grabs an asscheek in each hand, and with Jack’s help, pulls Steve forward towards him and off of his cock entirely.

“Aaa-augh—! Ahh _hnnngghh,_ ” Steve cries, taken aback by the fluid that drips out of him as his body is left hungry; the peculiar sensation is eased the moment Jack’s hand comes up to cup him where he’s sopping and empty.

“ _Damn_ ,” Jack whispers. “Damn, you’re just.” He shifts his palm to-and-fro, nudging Steve’s heavy sack in the front with his fingertips and catching his nails on Steve’s supple, twitching hole on the way back. Steve arches and clenches and tries to push down for more—Brock must have been inside of him long enough that the void is now unmentionable, unbearable. He can’t wrap his mind around it, and he mewls, wordless at the separation. “Fucking hell, boy, calm down, we gotcha.”

Steve’s lifted such that he can’t get any purchase on the floor with his toes. Most of his weight rests on Brock’s torso. Jack pushes several fingers—Steve doesn’t know how many—inside to console him, and then helps Brock grunt and shuffle around so Brock is at least resting back against the front of the sofa. Steve’s forehead tips forward and makes contact with the clammy leather from where his cheek is plastered against Brock’s shoulder.

Once he’s made himself comfortable, Brock reaches down further to slip a couple of fingers into Steve on either edge. His fingers pull to the side and Jack pulls his up and then—

Then—

Steve orgasms with a wailing shout all over his shower wall. He sobs, and shakes, and falls to his knees to the bottom of the tub. His rectum spasms around his fingers like an afterthought; he stares, dull, at the semen sliding down with the water to spiral into the drain.

He’s still hard, but the water’s been going long enough that the heat is starting to die off; he gingerly eases his fingers out of himself and grabs the soap and shampoo. He was in here to get clean in the first place.

The remainder of his bedtime routine happens through a dense fog—some of it’s from the bathroom, and most of it’s in all in his head. Somehow, Steve manages to pat himself dry and wrap a towel about his waist; he eats something out of his fridge for dinner, and then wobbles back to the bathroom sink to brush his teeth.

In the mirror, with its white, fluorescent lighting, Steve looks pale, and very alone. His ass spasms again in sympathy, as does his cock. He, he hadn’t. He hadn’t really finished, and the sudden realization that he has a toy spurs him to quickly spit and rinse the foam from his mouth.

Steve doesn’t bother with bedclothes once he hangs up his towel on the rack. He gets himself bundled up in his quilts and comforter before he leans over the side of the bed to rummage around in the bottom drawer of his nightstand to search for the anal plug that he’d obtained on the third time his team had been over. Once he finds it, he throws the sheets over his head and holds it against his stomach to warm the black, glossy silicone to a comfortable temperature.

It’s heavy in his hands, and after a few minutes, Steve rolls over onto his knees and elbows in his little bed-cave to nudge it against his opening while he strokes his erection with his other hand. He ejaculates again soon enough, and uses that to slick himself; once the tip breaches the rim, Steve thrusts in the rest of the plug right to the base with the heel of his palm, entirely overeager. He always adjusts just fine afterwards, but the action still makes him shake all over and sink his teeth into his pillow to stifle his cries. Beneath the sheets, the temperature rises, and rises, and rises. He starts to quiver, and falls over on his side to curl into a ball around the weight nestled between his legs.

He waits a bit to catch his breath, playing with one hand where his tacky, unresisting flesh meets with the firm comfort of the toy. It’s soft, there—tender, and slippery, and…and _pretty._ It feels cute, and _pretty_ , and Steve flushes so hard his head grows faint and it’s difficult to remember to resume stroking himself with his other hand at the same time.

He does, though, and with both hands moving in tandem, Steve drifts back to where he’d been in the shower before his surficial orgasm had thrown him back to awareness.

Brock and Jack. Right. Brock had effectively dropped him at the same time that Jack had pushed in—Steve doesn’t clearly remember what had happened next, only that everything had gone white. He had returned to the flickering dimness of the hour once the sounds had evened out, Steve thinks. Something had given way, and once the indescribable surge of that physical failure had faded away into familiarity, it had all been fine. But until then, it hadn’t.

The sound, the fine one and not that prior whiteness, had been a steady, thumping squelch, he now recalls. He’s not sure if it was _good_ , but he knows that Brock had still been supporting his legs so that Steve’s feet were dangling in the air—he knows that their bellies were pressed flush and Jack’s was smooth against Steve’s back.

“Aw, baby, don’t cry,” Brock murmurs. “Shhh, baby, what a good boy, atta boy, keep going, keep going, you’re opening up like dream, babydoll—“

“You feel incredible,” Jack adds, raspy and heaving.

Every other word ends in the thick slap of somebody’s pelvis against Steve’s ass. The glide is a frictionless, mind-numbing agony that makes itself present only as a faint, aching heat between Steve’s legs. Besides that—besides that. It’s…Steve, he doesn’t know. He doesn’t know how it is. This part, he tries to gloss over. He doesn’t know how to remember it, because he couldn’t describe it to begin with. Good? Bad? It’s something, that’s for sure, something that’s not loneliness, nor cold.

“Fucking delicious, wanna eat this every fucking day, like, like a buffet, or something, a five, no, _fifty-star,_ a fucking fifty-star restaurant—“ Steve gets bitten on his bloodied shoulders, down his back. He shakes at the petting that comes with it, but his arms remain slack in the belt.

Steve shakes a lot. He also drools all over Brock’s shirt. There’s snot mingling with the mess from his eyes, and his breath is coming in erratic, strained bursts in-between each alternating thrust; it feels like that’s the only time his lungs have the space to expand.

Without unlooping his elbow from beneath Steve’s knee, Brock reaches up to fist his hand into Steve’s hair and tug Steve’s head aside to arch the neck. It means that Steve’s folded up double on one side, his thigh crushed against his breast. “Atta boy, that’s right, open up just like that.”

One of Jack’s hands slips between Brock and Steve to apply twisting jerks to Steve’s cock. He urges two orgasms out of Steve before Brock spills with a snarl, yanking Steve down in time for several thrusts before Brock sighs and slumps back against the couch. His grip slackens, somewhat, but he lies Steve down flat against him, and runs one hand down Steve’s nape to back and the other from back to the top of Steve’s sweat-sticky tailbone.

That way, his elbows keep Steve spread while Jack laughs and continues to work Steve over like a piston. “What a good boy you are, huh? Who’s a good boy?”

“C’mon, buddy, who’s a good boy? Who?” Brock licks some of the salt off of Steve’s face, his chest shaking with something suppressed; it exhibits itself in a breathy thickness when he speaks. “Who, Cap? Who’s a good boy? Speak up, yeah? Tell us, who’s a good boy?”

A good boy, good, good boy. Boy, good, good boy, boy good…good? Boy, who, who’s a…good? Who? The words take some time to filter in—while they do, Steve swallows and shivers and attempts to coordinate his throat and tongue into an arrangement that can shape sound into something other than a moan.

He fails.

“Hey, I said—“

Steve whimpers when Jack’s hand slaps down on one buttock; he mewls when the palm strikes the other. He sobs when the blow comes at his cleft. Still, Steve can’t help but whine when Jack stops moving his hips to pull Steve’s cheeks apart to spit. The additional moisture doesn’t do much. Steve’s already dripping. He can feel it when he shifts minutely, feel it slide out of him despite how stuffed he is. The air still tastes like iron.

“Cap, what did he say?”

Steve shakes his head, back and forth and back and forth and pushes his face into Brock’s shoulder so he can rock back and forth, back and forth. The numb heat surges up again and chases away the ice-sharp, prickling pain that had begun to reemerge.

He has to stop when one of Brock’s hands gouges down his back; suddenly overwhelmed, all that Steve can do is tremble and weep into the soaked fabric against his eyes. “ _No_ , bad. _Bad boy,_ bad _._ You just don’t get it, do you? He asked you if you were a good boy.” Brock’s nails detach from Steve’s flesh and his fingers trail down, down, down, ever so gently. “So, are you? Are you a _good boy_?”

Yes—no. Yes? No, no no no, no…? Steve’s not, he’s not _bad_ , he’s good. He has to be good, he was being a good boy, they told him so—

“Y-yes,” Steve pants, uplifting his head in panicked supplication. Jack takes that opportunity to resume thrusting, which throws off Steve’s ability to say the rest of the phrase entirely. “I-I’m, I’m a, uh, _uh, nngh, hah, ah, auugh, auh, auh—_ “

“Who’s a good boy?” Brock’s hand comes around to cup at the back of Steve’s head, forcing him to keep eye contact. In shame, Steve’s skin burns with a renewed blush and he hiccups. He can’t turn his face away, and tears continue to spring forth, unbidden. The burning penetrates deeper.

“ _Auh_ , auh—ah, I, I, I’m, I’m uhhnn, I’m a, annhhh—a, a goo—gh _hhkk!_ ”

“Who’s a _good boy_?”

“I’m a goouuhhhh, uhh, _uhnnn_ —“

“ _Who’s a good boy_?”

“I’m a goo—ooo _dduuuhhh_ , _goo_ ohhh, guh-good— _ahh, auh!_ A g-good, good b-oyyyy, a good b-boy—!”

Jack comes, then, in a flurry of expletives; Steve promptly gets shoved back against Jack, who immediately hooks his elbows under Steve’s knees to relieve Brock from his duty. With movement otherwise ceased, the only sounds to be heard are that of labored breathing; there’s some small, continuous whimpering below it all, wet and frail. It takes a moment for Steve to realize that it’s coming from him.

Brock cracks his neck, stretches; he’s as lavish as some sleek, oil-black hunting hound, his cropped hair like cropped ears, as sharp-jawed as the length of a knife. He runs a finger up the length of Steve’s erection, shining with ejaculate and as purpled as the rest of Steve’s body. It bobs, obscene, when he flicks it. Steve bites through his lip and feels the blood bead down his chin in one droplet, two. The wound doesn’t close, but stops oozing in a matter of seconds.

“Sorry, Cap,” Brock says, sloe-eyed and apologetic. He wipes up a fingerful of the opaque mess on Steve’s stomach and some of the red on his chin to push it past Steve’s slightly parted lips. Steve licks. Brock brings up another glistening finger, and Steve cleans it, again. Rinse, repeat, rinse, repeat. “Didn’t quite catch that.”

His hands drop to splay over Steve’s spread ass, the heels of his palms centered at Steve’s center—where Steve is stretched beyond simple fullness. His thumbs tease at Steve’s perineum; his index fingers skirt at the base Steve’s balls and cock. It feels so different down there that Steve’s not sure if what he’s looking at is a part of him, at all. The touches seem as if they’re coming from very, very far away. “What were you, again?”

“A g-good boy,” Steve snuffles, sleepily subdued. His lashes drag into his line of view whenever he blinks, overburdened with salt. “I’m a good boy.”

Brock beams from ear to ear. “That’s right.” His grin is all teeth, and meets his eyes in a thin, wicked crinkle. This observation ceases to matter once Brock begins to roll his hips. “You’re a _good boy_ , so own up to it. We just want to make sure, you understand? You’re doin’ great, pal.”

“I’m a good boy.”

“Uh-huh, yeah. One more time, nice and sweet, just like that.”

“I’m a, a good boy, I’m a good boy.”

“Mmm. You’re being mighty swell right now, yeah? Such a good, soft boy, such a pretty boy, why don’t you clench for me, yeah? Yeah—atta boy, nice and tight, oh _man_. You’re so fucking hungry for this.”

“Y-yeah…uh, aaahh, auhhh, auh… _auh_ …” The pace is better. It’s slower, and Brock’s hands roam like a balm over Steve’s skin while the sounds emerging from their intersection fill the room in little sucking slurps and dragging squelches. There’s a dependability to their alternating rhythm that makes Steve sigh, reassured by the cyclicity.

His head flops back onto a shoulder, and lolls off to the side to bump his nose against the pulse at the front of Jack’s throat. “Shit, he’s a slobberer.”

“Then make him busy, idiot.”

Steve’s right knee gets hoisted up to his shoulder, and two fingers enter Steve’s mouth; he latches on to them, immediately. Soothed by the weight upon his tongue, he shuts his eyes. Somewhere else, Brock swears. “Aw, ow, he got tight, fuck, clenched too much—“

“You don’t think I don’t feel that, _Christ._ ”

“I’m a little occupied, so how about you do us a solid and, y’know—“

Steve’s left knee drops; two fingers push into him to scrape at his inner walls alongside Jack and Brock. Steve’s eyes fly open and he shouts, garbled, around the digits pressed down into the back of his throat.

“Shhhhh, shush, boy,” Brock responds, moving faster. It hurts. Steve writhes, escalating his cries. For this, he earns a sharp slap across his face. “You heard me, right? You’re a good boy—so act like one.”

Steve’s a good boy. He’s a good boy, and good boys…he doesn’t know what they do. But good boys aren’t supposed to, to be loud? Is that right? Steve doesn’t know. He doesn’t know, and his muffled sobbing trails off into the occasional hiccup. Jack rewards him with another finger in his mouth, so Steve slurps at them in mollification. He’s a good boy, he’s a good boy, he’s a good boy. He wants to be a good boy.

And, and. Good boys, they.

“Open him up a little more, he’ll heal.”

The two fingers up his ass become three, then four, pushed in flush to the crook where Jack’s thumb meets his palm. “Cap, yeah, soften up, you’re too tight now, let us back in.”

Steve, he, he, he tries, he tries—! He tries, he tries—

But his body ends up failing him before he can make it work, so he becomes freshly sloppy again with copper and rust. Steve’s not supposed to cry out; he swallows his mewls, obedient, around Jack’s fingers. His face is sticky with rivulets of brine, and the taste ekes its way into his mouth as metallic and bitter as anything.

He’s praised for his good behavior, so Steve tries to spread his legs further for more. He wants more, _more_ , he needs it, begs for it in the only way can. “ _Perfect,_ ” he receives, from somewhere. “Atta boy, that’s a _good boy_ , lettin’ me and Jack take care of you—we doin’ a good job, baby?”

It takes so much energy to nod. Steve does.

“Aw, babydoll, so good. So good.”

So good. So good. Steve’s good. This must be good. It’s good, everything is, is good, it’s good. It feels good. It feels _so good_.

“Y-yesss, yes,” Steve breathes, around the fingers in his mouth. His head flops against Jack’s shoulder with each ball-deep thrust. “Yes, yeah, please— _please_ , please, I. S-s-soooo, s-sooo goo-ood, so good…” His tongue darts out to the side to cool his dry lips—his neglected cock gives a weak splurt against his belly. It’s swollen, and it hurts; a good hurt. Everything is good.

“ _That_ good, huh?”

Steve nods again, faster. The less he has to speak, the better. His throat is sore from thirst, from crying.

“You’re going to come just like this, ok? Since you’re such a _good boy_. You’re gonna count with me, so…”

Brock ramps up his pace; he leans forward to scrape at Steve’s nipples with his tongue and teeth, alternating every few seconds or so. Brock takes bites of the reddened flesh and tugs back, releases, sucks the burn away into an ache that goes heart-deep. “These fucking tits, _fuck_. Can’t believe ‘em,” he snarls, all dark, in-between the slick pop from the suction of his lips on Steve. “Prob’ly can get some damn milk out of these.”

The pressure builds and builds and builds with every bruising, bleeding kiss along Steve’s chest. When Steve finally reaches release, it’s with an all-body shudder that makes him howl and thrash in Jack’s arms—the spunk splashes Brock all over his collarbones.

Brock, however, keeps working Steve over until he comes, too, filling up some rippling reservoir, that unfathomable place inside of Steve—that secret, insatiable, shameful place. It overflows to creep out and slick up the clammy, dark parts of his cleft exposed to the light by his spread thighs; Steve arches and loosens, like he’s supposed to do. It feels good, full and sweet and hot and wet, so wet.

Steve gets pulled forward again, and he automatically laps up the mess he’s made on Brock’s skin. Brock doesn’t need to ask for anything, since Steve’s a _good boy_ and this was all his fault, anyway. He rubs his face against Brock’s neck when he’s done, and sighs in pleasure at the satisfied petting that runs down the knobs of his spine. Steve’s a good boy. He’s such a good boy.

“That’s one.”

Two arrives in the middle of Jack’s business, and three at the end when he’s pushed back and Brock starts up as Jack is finishing. Four is a surprise that makes Steve clench and makes Brock backhand him so hard Steve’s lip splits. Five is Brock leaning forward to suck that same lip into his mouth and changing the angle of their movements. Six is in a howling rush after Brock comes, and seven—

Seven is all Steve. He sits, suspended, between Jack and Brock, too aching to even twitch around them anymore. His hanging head means that his view is full of himself, still curving up so stiffly that his swollen, rosy head brushes against the muscles of his abdomen every time Steve shakes his way through another heaving breath. Everything is shining, lit aglow by Steve’s Irish blush and the milky sheen of his own ejaculate and crystalline sweat.

Brock cups his face, pushing in his thumb so Steve can mindlessly suck at the salt on the surface. Pursing his mouth around the intrusion only makes his lip split open again, but Steve doesn’t care about that. There’s already so much salt that the metallic tang is inconsequential. He leans into the palm and nuzzles into the stink of sex. It’s sticky, but warm.

Because both of his men’s hands are occupied with stroking away the goosebumps along Steve’s flanks and chest, Steve’s legs lie slack on the floor. His palms are damp behind his back—from sweat or the blood under his nails from having tensed so much, Steve doesn’t know. He doesn’t care. Jack licks the roughness of Steve’s shoulders, stippled from rugburn and uneven healing. It feels good. Steve’s a good boy.

Their hands pull away, and Steve whines, immediately miserable at the cessation of their tender affection.

“Babydoll, you gotta contribute.”

“Yeah, boy, we took such good care of you, we’re tired. It’s your turn.”

It’s Steve’s turn. Ok. Steve’s good. Steve’s a good boy, he’s a good boy, it’s his turn. He licks his lips, looks down at himself.

He looks down, and sees his belly, slightly distended from how full he is, how stuffed. There’s a lot of some deeply pinkish fluid soaked into the hair at Brock’s groin, and a lot of white in Steve’s. His legs don’t want to carry any weight—he discovers this when he shifts from side-to-side, testing. Warm liquid seeps out from him, feeling much thinner than diarrhea; the sound is easy and suckling, somewhere between Steve’s recollection of pulling his boots out of the mud and Mrs. Barnes nursing the twins under a quilt in the corner of the living room.

It’s a very pretty sound, and Steve blushes. Brock slaps his cock; Steve chokes down his shout into a sob, and then a low, trailing groan. He’s getting faster at it. He’s a good boy. “C’mon, boy, don’t waste our time.”

Jack and Brock don’t allow him to lean in either direction towards them—they only help to keep him upright, if not balanced. Balance is Steve’s responsibility, so in order to support himself with his arms bound behind him, Steve spreads his thighs, digs in his toes, and arches back, curls in, arches back, curls in.

He does his best not to slip off, because he’s not sure if he’d be able to get back on. But it goes alright, he thinks; Steve rolls his hips to get a better sense of how long his men are, and then starts arching back and forth at a steady pace that only works a third of their lengths at a time. With both of them fully erect inside, Steve doesn’t last long at all, not when he’s so, so full. He swallows his wail when he comes, for the seventh time, but Steve’s a good boy and gets the job done—he keeps going once he’s regained enough control over his trembling thighs to continue.

Steve counts eight, then nine once he’s started slowly lifting himself up and down. Ten is when he switches to a relentless bounce, and eleven is when his cock can’t take any more impacts from slapping between his and Brock’s shining abdomens.

His knee slips on the floor from his sweat and the accumulated puddle of slop trickling down both of his inner thighs; he collapses forward onto Brock, utterly spent and twitching in tight knots all over. With Steve’s head turned to the side, he can see the muscles in his calf spasm, the ligaments of his knee jump and quiver. He drools.

“Fucking shit _dog_ ,” Brock grits, vicious. “ _Bad dog,_ you aren’t fucking done. Get the fuck up, keep going, _like the good boy you are_.”

A hand squeezes at the back of Steve’s neck, and Steve curves up, frantic to comply—but the pressure is so good that he writhes through his tears, moaning as Brock’s other hand pinches a well-bitten nipple and twists nearly all the way around. He’s not bad, he’s a not a bad boy, he’s a good boy, good boy, good boy good dog good boy good dog dog dog dog good dog boy boy dog good boy good _good boy_ —! Steve immediately starts grinding his hips back again, panting with each blow that Jack lands on his bruised flanks.

Every time a palm lands on a preexisting scrape and takes the skin with it, Jack’s voice rebounds in Steve’s echoing, blurry head, all percussive and ringing with dark delight. “Who’s a fucking _good boy_? Who’s so _good_ , _so fucking good_ to fuck? Who’s such a pretty thing to fill up to the brim, who’s got a greedy little fuckhole, fucking _famished_ , makes such fucking cute little noises, takes me in wetter than the best whore, like that, like that, aw, fuck, who’s a good boy?”

Steve’s a good boy.

He knows this, he’s a good boy. His men take care of good boys, and Steve wants to be taken care of. Being taken care of is good. Steve is a _good boy_ , and starved to his bones, he chases after his release.

“I, I—“

“Speak up, pal, let’s hear that voice.”

_i’m a good boy good boy good boy_

Steve howls, and howls and howls, and he must have cried out the right thing in there somewhere, because suddenly he’s being cradled; he bursts into tears of pleasure and relief at their kisses and praise. They heard him. He’s a good boy, after all.

He cycles through contracting and softening to make it good for them, and he gets to nuzzle into Brock’s neck as much as he wants as a result. He’s stroked, up and down his sticky skin; his sides are petted, from waist to ribs to armpits and down again. His biceps are squeezed, crooned over. He receives lovely, warm licks and soft mouthing at his throat and jaw. Fingers run through his hair and dance under his thighs to play at him from hip to ankle. It’s so nice, so good. He worked so hard. It’s hard to be good, he thinks. But being good is so nice. This is so nice.

Steve tries to be good _so very hard_ , and he turns his face into the proffered hand after—after? After. After? How far did he drift in the warmth of it? It probably doesn’t matter, but he blinks the glaze away and finds that he’s been staring at one leg of his coffee table without being aware of it being there at all. His arms are in front of him, welted and limp.

“Shhh,” somebody says. “Shhh, c’mere, boy, atta boy, yeah.”

Steve looks up from where he’s been lying on the floor, sticky and cold. Brock is crouched some distance away, in the middle of the hallway. His shirt has been pulled back down, and his jeans are zipped up. The front is darkly stained, but looks as if it’s halfway to dry. “C’mere, boy.” Brock clicks his tongue, and wriggles the fingers of his outstretched hand in promise. “Gotta give you a bath, since you got so _dirty_.”

Dirty? “Gotta take care of you, so _c’mere._ ”

Steve perks up. He wants to be taken care of, so he tries to get to his feet.

His legs, they don’t work—they spasm, useless and shooting with pain into the faded, burning core of him. That’s bad.

He looks up at Brock, frightened of the consequences. Steve’s a good boy! He’s good, he’s trying—!

Brock can tell, clearly, so he just shrugs. “That’s fine,” Brock hums. “Just come over, yeah?”

Why is it so cold? Steve’s cold, and his hands hurt, and his knees hurt, and his ass is empty and he hates it. He manages to get onto all fours, and arches his back in silent entreaty for Brock to come over and fill him up with fire, again—but Brock doesn’t, just shakes his head and leaves his hand outstretched.

It takes forever for Steve to make his way over, but by the time he gets to Brock and earns that hand ruffling through his hair, Brock unexpectedly stands up and walks down the hallway. He’s very tall, and Steve whimpers. “Real good, Cap, real good—but the bathroom’s this way.”

Jack’s sitting on the edge of the tub, checking the temperature with his fingers. The room isn’t full of steam like Steve had expected. He makes a confused sound, but Brock just slaps Steve’s ass and Steve shuffles forward until he’s kneeling on the rug next to the tub. There’s a yelp—Steve sees that Jack’s touched his wet fingers to the bare skin of Brock’s forearm. “How’s that?” Jack laughs, reaching down with his other hand to pamper Steve’s cheek. Steve leans forward and rests his face against Jack’s warm thigh, happily. It feels _so nice_.

“That’s fucking _perfect_ , but the next time you test it on me, I’ll end you.”

Steve closes his eyes. His men talk over him for a while, but whatever. Eventually, Jack leans down to hook his arms underneath Steve’s armpits, and Brock gets down on his knees to support Steve’s stomach. “Ok, one, two—oopsy-daisy!”

Cold 

Cold

Cold, cold, cold, _cold cold cold cold cold cold cold_

_coldcoldcoldcoldcoldcoldcoldcoldcoldcoldcoldcoldcoldcoldcoldcoldcoldcoldcoldcoldcoldcoldcoldcoldcodcoldcoldcoldcold_

There’s an unrelenting erection abruptly thrust into his mouth, and Steve blindly clutches at the hips of its owner, burying himself into as much heat as he possibly can. It strikes the back of his throat; he forces himself not to gag, because he’s a good boy. Laughter. “Sheesh, boy, so eager. Calm down.”

It’s _so hard_ to hold back, though. He wants more, more heat, more fullness, more completeness. His head is buzzing from the echoes of some terrible sound still reverberating between his bathroom tiles. He tastes more blood than he does anything else.

The hand that presses his nose into the dark hair at the base of the cock he’s swallowing holds him there, all hot and snug and Steve moans, wanting more. His sphincter twitches, and the haze of sex around Steve’s awareness filters away the delicate clink of the ice bumping against the edges of the bathtub.

His wet hair is stroked, and the fingers massage his scalp. It feels _amazing_ , and Steve cuddles closer, if that’s even possible. “Hey, Rollins; we’ll swap when I reach the waist.”

“Sounds good.” Jack strokes Steve’s lips, thoughtful. “Does nobody _ever_ feed you? You love this, don’t you? Getting this treat all big and tasty in your mouth? Nobody takes care of you like we do, isn’t that right?”

Steve purrs in assent, leaning into the touches. That’s right. This is good. Being taken care of—that’s good.

He doesn’t really notice that Brock’s been scrubbing him at all until Brock reaches the tender skin of his inner thighs. It hurts. Steve pushes away from it, further onto Jack; but then Brock slips several fingers inside of him, and the comfort of being filled helps Steve to bear the circular, scratching motions all over his skin.

“That’s it, atta boy, just relax.” The fingers scrape and pull and clean him out, very deliberately. It feels as if Steve’s dragging out, too, so he swallows harder to keep himself steady. He rocks, trapped between Jack and Brock; it makes little waves in the tub. It doesn’t take long for Steve go hard again, and to alleviate the pressure, he curves his back in the water and allows Jack to push his arms down to the tub so he can better support himself. It means that Steve’s got his head turned awkwardly to the side and his neck craned up to keep sucking, but he manages. The ice bumps at his collarbone, and Steve doesn’t feel it at all. He swallows all of Jack’s precum and semen. It doesn’t quench his thirst in the slightest.

He wants to cry when Jack forces his head off, but sags in assurance once Brock’s hands come to push him down and fill him up again. Down where Steve’s ravenous, Jack quickly occupies the empty space and starts stretching to scrub at Steve’s torso. When the scrubber passes over the skinless bits of him along his shoulders, the tender nubs of his nipples, Steve releases a garbled moan around the head of Brock’s erection pulsing in his throat.

Brock pets him; he stills. Jack passes the scrubber over to Brock, who uses it to get the spaces along Steve’s upper chest and neck that Jack can’t reach. In the meantime, Jack wraps his free hand around Steve’s cock and starts corkscrewing the fingers of his other. “Use your tongue, show me you want it, show me you’re a good boy.”

Steve lavishes Brock with as much attention as he can with his arms still trembling in the water. He spits and chokes up some of Jack’s emission to make it even wetter; his eyelashes flutter, ecstatic, when Brock moans and clutches at Steve to pull him deeper, hotter, safer. So safe. Steve’s safe here, safe and warm.

He wants to swallow, to take in everything, but Brock pulls out and wipes his cock all over Steve’s face. He slaps it against Steve’s reaching lips and doesn’t push back in no matter how much Steve drools and stretches for it. “Come on, babydoll, such a good boy, so good. I wanna see it, c’mon, come for me—“

Steve constricts around Jack’s fingers, changes up how he’s been rocking. The water starts to spill over the edges of the tub, but nobody says anything so it must be fine. His orgasm takes him by yelping, blubbering storm and Steve goes entirely weak; he’d have collapsed if Brock wasn’t holding him up by the hair, but then Brock comes all over his face and rubs it into his skin like Steve remembers his mother doing with menthol cream to keep his breathing easy at night.

Steve can’t breathe at all, but his trembling eases once the heat of Brock’s emission soaks into him. “Rollins, look.”

Jack nudges his way into Steve’s line of view. His face is very appreciative. “Lookin’ good, Cap. You’re gorgeous, you know that?”

Gulping, Steve blinks at him, uncertain how to answer. His eyelashes are stuck together, and he blushes.

“So perfect, but we got you dirty again,” Brock chuckles. He pats Steve’s cheek once, then twice. “Take a big breath, yeah?” Steve does. “ _Good boy._ ”

He gets shoved underwater. Steve screams into the stained void, red all around him and pouring into his eyes his nose his mouth his ears his insides—his everything. Brock saves him by the hair, doubling him back into the light. “Still dirty.” Steve goes under again, but struggles less; he’s here because he’s dirty. He needs to get clean again. Brock will pull him out into the warmth once he is.

Out. “Ehhh, what do you think?”

“Nah, he’s still got some on his chin.” In.

Out. “Now?”

“Nah.”

In, out, in, out. Steve’s deemed acceptable after some time, and leans on Jack when they urge him upright so they can drain the tub. The water swirling away is dark, maybe too dark to be called pink alone—the ice collects in a tainted pile by the drain, interspersed with tiny raggedy scraps of red.

His men help him step out of the tub, and wrap him in the towel that Steve keeps hung on the rack. They sit him down on the toilet lid; Steve mewls, the wretchedness from the lack of anything inside of him overtaking the sting of the fluffy cotton against his skin. “Shhh, baby, you did so _good_. Yeah? Who’s a good boy?”

Steve shivers. His eyelashes flutter. It’s hard to keep them open, and when he talks, he ends up being far quieter than he wants to be. “I’m a good boy.”

“Mmm.”

They dry his hair with another towel. Out of the corner of Steve’s eye, he spies whatever scrubber they’d been using to clean him resting on the corner of the countertop by the sink.

It’s a clumped handful of steel wool. At first, he doesn’t recognize it at all; it’s so matted with little bits of flesh and skin that it looks more like a misshapen ball of ground meat rolled with glitter. Jack catches him looking. “Oh, that? You were _filthy_ , like. Disgusting.”

Steve flinches, terribly ashamed. “No, no, it’s ok!” Brock pats the towel along Steve’s puffy lips, croons at him until Steve’s humiliated blush starts to fade. “We wanted to clean you up real good, because you’re a good boy, and good boys get taken care of? Give me a nod, aw, that’s right, sweetheart. That’s right. Now you’re a _real_ good boy, all nice and squeaky-clean.”

They support him over to bed, and throw back his covers to roll him inside without dressing him. Steve doesn’t cry out at the fire of the dry cloth against his redness, his rawness. He’d rather this burning than having to go without any kind of warmth at all. He lies there, soaking his sheets with pus and blood and whatever tacky mess is left inside of him to ooze out. He’s very comfortable, but maybe that’s because he actually does want to sleep, for once.

“We’re gonna go, Cap. You need anything else?”

The announcement is startling; he must have drifted, again. He doesn’t know what time it is. Steve blinks, dull. His head is on his pillow—he’s been tucked in on his side, blankets up to his chin. He works his throat, but it refuses to cooperate.

“Hmm? What’s that?”

“Wait, I.” _Finally_. It’s a pathetic croak, but at least it’s something. “I wanted to, to thank you.”

Brock returns from where he’d stepped out by the doorframe of Steve’s bedroom. His face is genuinely curious, but that’s stretched over something else, something roiling. It’s heated, Steve thinks, but maybe he’s too tired to make much sense of it anymore. “Thanks, huh? For what?”

“F-for, for taking care of me.”

“Aw, Steve.” He gets what would have been a nice scratch behind his ear, but it hurts because he’s got no skin there anymore. “No biggie. Me and Jack, we’re on _your_ Strike team. It’s our job. Taking care of you is what we’re _supposed_ to do, and we like it.”

“You ever need us,” Jack adds, from the hallway, “You know where we’ll be at.”

They’re leaving. Steve doesn’t want them to go, so he reaches out from under his cocoon and snags Brock’s damp shirt with hand that’s mottled, indeed, like he’s spilled a berry-surprise pie all over himself. He can’t talk in anything over a whisper. “I really appreciate it. I, I hope I was good enough.”

“You were great,” Brock replies. His voice is fond. Shuddering, Steve shuts his eyes. “You were more than good.”

“Ok.”

“It was our pleasure, honestly. Anytime, got that?” _Got that_ , _boy_?

Steve’s a good boy. He nods. Brock gives him one last parting smile, then reaches over to turn off Steve’s bedside lamp with a click. In the darkness, Steve can see him padding away with his enhanced vision. He can see Brock’s silhouette in the open door, making a motion like a high five, or maybe a fistbump, with Jack’s. They must have been congratulating themselves on taking care of him—Steve supposes they did well. He’s warm all over, and very soft at his edges. He’s been taken care of. It was good. It was good. It was good.

He hears the faint bump of Brock closing the front door behind him, and the second _tunk_ of the door’s self-locking mechanism trapping Steve inside, alone.

Alone, he drifts off into a feverish sleep.

Alone, Steve comes, spluttering around his fist for the last of an indefinite number of times. Alone, on the surface, in the future, Steve curls more tightly into the dark, around the plug that stretches him with some illusion of company. Two of his fingers are nestled inside in his slickness, hooked in the front edge of his rim. It makes him gape slightly, starved. His other hand clenches into a fist over his stomach, coated in spunk and gummy with how much of it is there.

His phone buzzes on his nightstand. It pings with the sound that he’d programmed for Natasha’s texts, but Steve ignores it. It pings again, but since his cave of blankets is so thick, the light from his screen doesn’t penetrate into his humid, rank shelter.

Steve curls in, and in, and in. He’s a good boy. Good boys sleep, so he does.

**Author's Note:**

> There will be more. It's not going to be pretty.
> 
> Come talk to me on [tumblr](http://requiodile.tumblr.com/). I'll be happy to answer any and all of your questions, but if you want, check these [two](http://requiodile.tumblr.com/tagged/good-boy-fic) [tags](http://requiodile.tumblr.com/tagged/trashfic) for for preexisting discussions/more information!


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